Did you cash in on Cameron?

The Times leads this morning with the headline “The Great Gamble” but it’s not about betting but whether the Tory choice of David Cameron is going to work. For me “The Great Gamble” consisted of the scores of betting contracts I entered into on the contest since May.

With Guido expressing concern about one of the markets that I called wrongly can I reassure those concerned about my financial welfare that Cameron’s victory left me several thousand pounds up.

My main loser was the £200 maximum that PaddyPower allowed me to place at 3/1 that Cameron would get less than 66%.

My big winners were on laying David Davis heavily in the summer on Betfair when he was a strong odds-on favourite and going in again four weeks ago after the Populus poll suggested that he was leading Cameron amongst Tory supporters.

Other winners included BetHiLo’s spread on the age of the Tory leader which I sold at 49 years. Cameron is 39 so I made ten times my stake level. I also made a reasonable amount on IG’s Binary Bet market where I bought at 9 after Cameron’s campaign launch just before the Blackpool conference. I got out of this at 49 in the week after the Tory conference when all the talk was of sensational revelations in the Mail on Sunday.

So all told a pretty good leadership election. I take some satisfaction in making my first call on Cameron when he was at 5/1 on July 3rd.

Now for the Labour leadership, when Blair will go and, of course, the next General Election.

Mike Smithson